Titus 2:11

σωτήριος. The rec. text with CcD2bcEKLP and the great mass of authorities (MSS. and Fathers) inserts ἡ before σωτήριος (with a view of suggesting that σωτήριος is subject, not predicate); it is omitted by אAC*D2*G, the Syriac, Latin and Bohairic versions and is, in fact, unnecessary. א*G read σωτῆρος, and G prefixes τοῦ.

11. ἐπεφάνη γὰρ ἡ χάρις τοῦ θεοῦ σωτήριος πᾶσιν�, for the grace of God appeared bringing salvation to all men. ἡ χάρις τοῦ θεοῦ is the whole favour of God, revealed in the Person of Christ; in this brief sentence we have at once a declaration of the Incarnation (ἐπεφάνη; cp. Titus 3:4) and the Atonement (σωτήριος; cp. the Name Jesus, Matthew 1:21). The aorist ἐπεφάνη points to a definite manifestation in time of the unfailing grace of God, i.e. to the Nativity and the Advent of our Lord.

For the adj. σωτήριος, which does not occur again in the N.T., cp. Amos 5:22 σωτηρίους ἐπιφανείας ὑμῶν οὐκ ἐπιβλέψομαι. The absence of the article before σωτήριος (see crit. note) skews that it is not attached to the subject χάρις, but is connected with the predicate; it is as bringing salvation that this grace has visited us, not ‘the saving grace of God has appeared.’

The construction and order of the words require us to take πᾶσιν�, with σωτήριος, not with ἐπεφάνη, as the A.V., following Wiclif and the Rheims Version, has done. Tyndale has rightly that bringeth salvation unto all men, sc. whether Jew or Greek, bond or free. It is the Universality of the Atonement (cp. 1 Timothy 2:4) which is the thought in the second clause of the verse; it is not indeed easy to attach any exact sense to the rendering “appeared unto all men.” Even yet, after nineteen centuries of Christian Missions, ‘the grace of God’ is still unknown to multitudes of those whose nature the Lord took upon Himself; it has not yet ‘appeared’ to them.